


Fears I Did Not Know

by CopperCaravan



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Pre-Relationship, Vault 111, also Hancock this is a Callout Post for sending some random woman to deal with a serial killer, because that's about all they can manage at this point, why is everyone so afraid of intimacy???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 03:11:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6406354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(AKA: "Here's the Vault and all my dead neighbors. Tada!")<br/>"Sequel" (kinda sorta) to Doesn't Hurt Like I Thought It Would. Tens takes Hancock to Vault 111 and he learns some unexpected things even before they get there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fears I Did Not Know

**Author's Note:**

> So, if anyone was thinking I wrote Hancock with too much emotional turmoil (which I have to concede; that is true, yes), I now raise you my OC, who is an Emotional Turmoil Factory and Repressing Extraordinaire.  
> Also, I'm feeling pretty "eh" about this one (which I've decided is like 6.8/10, whereas "meh" is like a 5/10) but I plowed through it because I really just wanted to write it, you know? What I'm getting at here is that I may re-write (or at least heavily revise) later, but honestly no time soon because I'm a fool who stares at word docs for hours and refuses to wear my glasses and my eyes are doing that Thing, if you know what I mean, but I always feel so... lazy (?) if I'm not doing *something* content-output related. I'm rambling.  
> Anyway, here's Wondervault.

She stops, stands stock still for a minute, right before the bridge that crosses over into Sanctuary comes into view.

“You ok?” Hancock doesn’t touch her, still isn’t real sure about that kinda thing, but he sidles a little closer, ready to... do whatever. He’s half-scared she’s gonna faint or something, the way her skin’s a little too pale, her eyes a little too wide.

That’s the first thing that he notices, the first thing that really gives him pause: she’s scared.

As a general rule, Tens doesn’t really do that—get scared. He’s been with her a little over a month, known her a little longer than that, and he’d admired that fearlessness at first but the more time he’s spent with her, the more shit she’s thrown herself (sometimes needlessly) up against, the more he’s begun to... worry. Bravery, yeah, sure, that’s great, but he’s noticed by and by that there’s something a little more to it than that, something worth worrying about. Can’t pin it down though, not yet.

“Fine,” she says. “Just, uh—coming here is hard. I don’t... do it a lot.”

He’s never been to Sanctuary himself, not before he met her (because why the hell would he have been?) and not since (because although he thought about asking her once, he’d decided that explaining his curiosity just wasn’t worth it). Still, seems weird that she’s scared of this, of all things; it’d been her idea, after all. Well... if coming back is really what she’s so scared of. “But this is where you’re from, ain’t it?”

“Not even almost,” she says, rubbing one of her hands over her eyes. She’s not crying, but he’s worried that’s where they might end up and he’s got no idea what he’d do if that happened. It’s all so strange, her standing here like this, looking so _afraid._ There’s always been something in him that wants to defend, protect. It didn’t just slide into place after he put on Hancock’s coat, it didn’t click together after Vic’s boys beat that Drifter to death, it didn’t just wake up somewhere deep in his gut after his brother drove those ghouls—those _people_ —out of the city. _Protect_ has been hardwired into him since he was a kid, picking fights with bullies or staving off animals from the crops or just sitting around with his mama when she felt like crying her eyes out over everything that never went quite her way. It never went away, exactly; just got quieter as the years wore on him. But he’s been determined to bring it back, to make up for all the shit he let slide while he sat quiet on the sidelines watching it happen and Tens—she _does_ that. Gives him a hundred chances a day to do it too and not just to do it the way he’d done it with Vic. Ain’t gotta be all guns and grenades to get shit done anymore; twice as often as they’re wiping out a bunch of raiders, they’re setting up watch posts and handing out water bottles. She’s fierce as anything but she knows more than one way to _protect_ and if nothing else, he owes her for giving him that. And for her too, right now, he thinks all he ought to be doing is wrapping his arms around her and telling her that it’s gonna be fine, whatever it is, he’s gonna make sure it’s ok.

But it’s that damn hesitation again.

The Mayor of Goodneighbor is never left wanting for people in his bed and some of them are even decent enough to actually be attracted to him. It ain’t... Fuck, he doesn’t know quite _what_ it is, only that hesitation is not his game and he’s plenty brave enough when there’s a Deathclaw in front of him but apparently a pretty, badass woman with more decency in her middle finger than the Commonwealth’s got in its whole empty fucking sky is too much for him to handle.

“Hey,” he tries, forcing himself the final step toward her and putting his hand against her shoulder. He can hardly bear the way his fingers look against the skin of her arm but goddammit, whatever this is, it’s not gonna keep him standing on the sidelines watching while shit goes down and she’s clearly hurtin’ for something. She doesn’t recoil and he’s half way to chastising himself for still thinking she might after the other night, after the way her hands had run up and down his arms and back, after the way he’d put his hands on hers and she’d let him do it, let him offer her even half the comfort she gave him and— _get a grip, man, focus. Goddamn._ “We don’t gotta go, if you don’t want. Ain’t nothing here I gotta see to know—” _Dammit._ “You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

He’s not quite sure if he got across what he meant to, but whatever she took out of it, he’s glad for it because he’s barely finished talking before she’s turned toward him and thrown her arms around his neck. “’Least one of us is good with words,” she says, almost-laughter falling against his neck. “If you change your mind later,” she whispers, “I’m not gonna hold it against you. But thanks for saying it.”

_Anytime, Sunshine._

Too quick, though, she’s pulled away, chin up and shoulders squared and a grin on her face that he can’t make heads or tails of so far as sincerity goes. “Hope you’re ready, Hancock,” she says. “Sanctuary’s really got a thing about, uh... welcoming parties.”

...

That was not an exaggeration, he decides, watching the way folks start crowding around her as she crosses the bridge. Right when they’d topped the little hill in the road, right when the bridge had actually come into view, the woman at the forward post had waved her hand and turned to yell back over the settlement “She’s back! Hey! She’s back!” And man, the people had all but swarmed her. If there ain’t a welcoming party like this back at the Statehouse (well, maybe like this, with a little more booze), he’s gonna be a little jealous.

She’s crimson in the face and stammering “hi’s” and “nice to see you too’s” and it’s possibly the cutest damn thing he’s ever seen. A little over a month in her company and he has _never_ seen her blush. Stammer, sure; eloquent address ain’t her bag, but _blushing_? This view—her pink cheeks and downward glances and the hint of blush peeking out of her sleeves and over her shoulders, promising the spread of embarrassment across her chest under that shirt—it’s a whole different kind of adrenaline than he feels when he’s watching her launch a missile into a Deathclaw den and god knows that’s a fine feeling too.

He stays out of the way, lets the people have their Wasteland Queen, and watches, memorizes every shy gesture and humble word, and it’s a brief flash of an image—scooping her up and carrying her into one of these gutted old houses, laying her out and showing her just what a queen she is—but he shoves that to the back of his mind because she stands up on her toes, still hardly able to peek over a single head, and her eyes aren’t full of humility or acceptance or pride; she’s fucking terrified.

And she’s looking for him, mouthing his name as she twists her head one way and then another, trying to find him amid the excited settlers. “...my friend,” he hears her saying, as he elbows his way to her side.

And only now, close enough to really see, does he notice how bowed her shoulders have become, how curled into herself she is, barely tolerating the welcoming touches of some and shying completely away from others. A clap on the back here, a grip on her wrist there, a pat, an awkward hug, an arm looped around her waist. They don’t mean anything by it, these people; it’s clear enough they’re just glad she’s here, happy to welcome her back, and she’s trying to bear it with grace but this, too, is clearly not her bag.

“He’s—oh! There you are!” Her fingers are laced desperately into his in an instant and it catches him so by surprise, he almost pulls away—not from her, god, no, never from her, but he’d just not expected it—and when she feels the jerk of his arm at her touch, she tries to let go; her hand goes limp and her eyes glaze over, resigned to her fate, drifting by herself in this tiny sea of acolytes. _Oh no you don’t._ So he tightens his grip on her hand, runs the pad of his thumb over her knuckles, and adopts his Official Mayoral Demeanour.

“We gonna get this show on the road?”

She nods, so visibly relieved he has a hard time understanding how these people don’t see the effect they’re having on her, and she begins backing out of the crowd, the people slowly parting around them as she stutters through promises to “be back soon,” “come look at that generator later,” “visit as soon I’m done with, uh, things.”

“Quite the fan club you’ve got around here,” he says, letting her lead him across the settlement and ignoring the pleasure that swells in his chest when she doesn’t pull her hand away from him.

“Not the word I’d use,” she says back, a few steps ahead of him and looking up the hill. He can’t see her face but he can hear a little quiver in her voice: jitters leftover from the swarm, from the attention, from the touching _._ She’d recoiled from those people every time they’d advanced (“so good to see you again,” “so glad you’re back” “so long you’ve been gone”) and the twitches and jerks and gestures of her body had been familiar in the worst way; many a person’s pulled away from him like that. Offer to buy somebody a drink and they think they can’t say no, not to the Mayor of Goodneighbor, not to Hancock, but the way they cross their arms over their chest, the way they look at their feet, they way they shuffle backward at every step he takes toward them—he knows when he’s not wanted. And he always knows why. And he’s been waiting for her to do that to him; hell, every move he’s made, every move he _hasn’t_ made, has been him waiting for her to pull away, for her expressions, her gestures, if not her words, to size him up and tell him “No, John. Not like that.” “No, John. I just don’t...” “No. John, you’re not...” “Don’t touch me.” “Don’t look at me.” “Go away.” And that’d be fine; not like he’s gonna—hell, what _could_ he do? Can’t make people want you around.

But she’d been surrounded by people—people offering her the kinds of casual touches he’s half-terrified of offering to anyone—and she’d just wanted to get away. She’d looked for _him,_ latched onto _him,_ pressed her fingers into his skin and her forehead into his back and her hand into his hand and needed _him._ And even with it over, with the settlement growing smaller as they climb the hill, she’s holding onto him, relieved that he hadn’t rejected her. As if he even could’ve.

She stops outside a little building pod, and he can see the iconic lines and colours of Vault Tec barely rising from the ground before him.

“So, this is 111,” she says.

...

Her hand hovers over the button and she watches him for any hesitation. “You really don’t have to, John. You’re not gonna be letting me down or anything and it’s gonna be—”

“Go on,” he says, tosses his hand toward the console. “Do it.”

Go figure it’s a Big Red Goddamn Button. What fucks him up is that it’s a _Big Red Goddamn Button._ People’ve known this Vault was here. Nothing ever came out of it—no news, no people, no problems. But a fucking button? You’d think somebody would’ve pushed the damn thing.

She presses it and he hears the groan of gears and feels the slight tremble of the earth beneath him as he follows her onto the elevator platform. As it lowers, he can hear her breath hitch beside him, can hear the way she tries to stifle her fear and even out the pattern, but there’s no fooling him. He’s so completely unfamiliar with her fear that of course he knows it when he sees it now, when he hears it, when he feels it in the shake of her hand as he reaches toward her in the darkening light. She doesn’t pull away, just lets him try to help. Hell if he knows whether it works or not, but she lets him try all the same.

The smell washes over him slowly, little by little as the elevator sinks into the ground, and by the time it lurches to a halt and the harsh light of the Vault is shining in his eyes, the smell is almost overwhelming. And the source is obvious.

“Everyone’s dead,” she says quietly. But, quickly, she lifts her hands to her chin (and his hand too) and the fear’s still there when she adds “I didn’t kill them, I swear.”

This woman—this brave, beautiful, bold woman before him—she’s been shot, she’s been lied to, she’s fought for her life and for the lives of others, of people she doesn’t even really know. All that in only the time he’s known her and he, like everyone else in the Commonwealth, has heard stories about her too.

She wasn’t afraid of him when she first met him, not for being what he is or for knifing a punk for being a pain in the ass and talking out of turn before she even had both feet inside the gates of his city.

She wasn’t afraid of him when he sent her, like a fucking disposable pawn, to deal with those raiders, when she came back with some seriously fucked up news and some peace of mind for his people: “Pickman’s dead; I took care of it.”

She wasn’t afraid of him when she was standing at the mean end of Fahrenheit’s gun, not knowing if she was gonna get killed or worse, not having realized she’d been duped into fucking with the most powerful man in town.

She wasn’t even afraid of him the other night, sitting in front of her with his shirt off and every wrong thing that can be seen exposed for her to see. No hesitation, no disgust, no “you’re not gonna go feral, are you?”

She’s afraid now. _I didn’t kill them, I swear._

 _I know you didn’t,_ he wants to tell her. _Of course, I know you didn’t._ But the woman before him is not the same woman who has been by his side for the last several weeks. This is the woman from _before,_ the before he doesn’t know, and she’s begging him to forgive sins he doesn’t understand.

“I never wanted this for these people,” she says, tears finally falling. “John, I didn’t.”

“Hey. Hey, we’re good. You’re good,” he says, reaching for her other hand, bending down to whisper against her face. “Talk to me, sweetheart.”

...

There are some things that make a lot more sense now: songs she sings, figures of speech, questions with answers that everybody seems to know but her.

There was the _before_ before Hancock. The Vault and the cold and the wide-eyed sleep. The few short weeks she spent wandering the Wasteland, almost dying on a semi-regular basis while she adjusted and learned. What to eat, what not to eat, safe places to hide, unsafe people to find, the best routes into the city, the bridges she couldn’t cross. It was never the guns and the fights and the death that held her back; it was just this new version of the world. And she found Dogmeat. She found Nick. She found John.

There was the _before_ before the Vault. Sanctuary Hills and a baby she was never supposed to be able to have, a husband she never asked for, a life she never wanted, complete with all those Old World amenities that she hardly knew how to use, let alone how to be grateful for. There was a Mr. Handy that she was convinced was chipped by the government, a neighbour she thought was spying through the kitchen windows, a bag stashed in a hole in the backyard full of cash and ammo and cigarettes that she thought about grabbing every single day on her way out.

There was the _before_ before that, too. That’s the before that matters most, he realizes. That’s the one that really scares her. But she’s not ready to talk about that and he’s not going to push her.

He’s glad they came. Hell, if he hadn’t seen it himself—her husband and the cryopods and the dates logged into the terminals—he probably wouldn’t have believed it. He leans back against the wall and takes a breath. The air is just as stale and full of death as it was two hours ago and the smell is almost fitting given everything she’s said, like the right music, the right drug, to match the mood.

“I wasn’t—I never meant to _lie_ to you,” she says, wrapping her arms around her waist. “I didn’t; I just—how do you tell somebody that?” She huffs. Frustration is endearing, on her anyway. Usually, when she’s grasping for the right words, she huffs and puffs and swears more than even Fahrenheit does and he can’t help but smirk at her. But not now, not with her trying so hard to tell him what she’s trying to tell him and he thinks he knows already—not entirely, but enough—but he doesn’t want to push, doesn’t want to assume, doesn’t want to assume _wrong_. So he stays where he is, a few feet in front of her, watching her wring her shirt with her hands and bite her lip and sigh when the words that fall out aren’t the words she wants. He waits for her.

“You’re the first person—after they decommissioned me, _before_ they decommissioned me... I can count the choices I made— _I_ made—on one hand, John. And I didn’t know you...” He watches her brows knit together, the corners of her mouth turn down and her fingers twitch at the hem of her shirt. Her eyes jump and dodge: the floor, the corner, their shoes, anywhere but his face because she is so, so afraid that he will push her away.

“It’s just been a real long time since I had somebody that I—Christ, John, say _something_.”

Two quick strides and he’s got her in his arms, her face pressed into the breast of his shirt and all that fear—all day long, it was just leading up to this and he can’t believe he didn’t see—now it’s gone. That fucking Big Red Button up top isn’t gonna fix anything. _This,_ right here, anything he says and everything he can’t quite manage to say, none of that is gonna _fix_ anything. Nothing left to fix anyway, and she’s not asking him to, she just needs...

“I’m not goin’ anywhere,” he promises.

...

More than one way to protect somebody. Maybe it’s not that he didn’t know that before so much as it is that he... forgot. She reminds him.

Even just sleeping over there in the corner, her breathing more even than it’s been all day, her body curled around a skinny, dirty pillow, she reminds him. Even just sleeping, because she _is_ sleeping, like she _can_ sleep, like she’s _safe_ because she knows he’s here, gun propped on his knee, watching over her.

 _You don’t have to keep watch,_ she’d said. _We’re about as safe as we’re gonna get in here._

She doesn’t sleep in Sanctuary, apparently, and there’s only one bed shoved into the backroom of the truck stop. And it’d been real damn hard to turn down an excuse to crawl onto that mattress beside her but...

It’s been a long damn time since Hancock’s had a friend. He doesn’t want to fuck it up.

Yeah, he’s got plenty of ‘em. Always somebody around willing to trip balls with “good ole Hancock,” always somebody ready to drink up his booze too. Always somebody who’ll take care of a problem for caps or favours or a little muscle leaning on the right people in return and even a few who’ll do it for free (if free means “not stupid enough to say no”). One or two will even do it out of _loyalty,_ but that really just means he’s already paid them.

But this is kinda different. And maybe “friend” isn’t even the right word, really, or maybe he’s just been using it all wrong, but she’s it.

For one thing, she sure as shit ain’t afraid to say no to him, sure ain’t scared to tell him he can fuck right off when he’s getting on her nerves or his jokes are a little much or she’s just too tired to argue with him about something. Doesn’t do it _often,_ but it’s not because she’s scared to.

For another thing, ain’t many people he’s willing to put his back to. In fact, there’s exactly _one._ Her. And frankly, that’s just plain weird. Woman strolls into town, doesn’t even seem to like him all that much, breaks into his goddamn store room, and sure, there’s a little more to it than that but the basics are all there and that’s the god-honest truth: he’d put a pistol in her hand and let her point it at his head and he wouldn’t worry for a second. _Trust_ is goddamn commodity rarer than clean water and he’d hand it to her in a basket if he could.

And he had no fuckin’ idea that she felt that way too.

Sure, he knows he’s impressive on the field—plenty of other places too—but just ‘cause a body can shoot a target, don’t mean you should give ‘em your gun. Hell, most of the time, it means you _shouldn’t._ And he resolves that one day, he’s gonna ask her just what exactly was going through her head when she asked him to come along with her. He’d not been subtle about dropping hints, no, but she hadn’t had to pick up on them, hadn’t had to let him have his way; she’s not afraid to tell him no but she hadn’t. If it’d been him, if some prick-in-charge had sent him out on shitty errands knowing he probably wouldn’t make it back, if they’d introduced themselves with the blood of some dumbass staining their boots, he sure as shit wouldn’t have stuck his hand out and said “Hey buddy, wanna tag along?” One day. One day, he’s gonna ask her _why_ , but today he knows enough.

 _You’re the first person... I can count the choices I made—_ I _made—on one hand, John._

_It’s just been a real long time since I had somebody that I—_

That’s what it comes right down to: she _chose_ him and she didn’t have to.

She’s always stammering her way through stuff. She likes to read, picks up books along the way when she can find them. It’s not that she doesn’t _have_ words and it’s not that she doesn’t _understand_ them. Seems like they’re just never there when she needs them, seems like they never quite mean what she needs them to. But the spaces she leaves blank, he’s learning how to fill them in, a little at a time.


End file.
